C-SPAN hammers Sen. Chambliss

C-SPAN unloaded Friday on Sen. Saxby Chambliss after he charged that its televised proceedings of Congress were responsible for the partisan rancor in the Senate, pointing out the Georgia Republican had appeared on the network 599 times.

C-SPAN founder and CEO Brian Lamb charged that the senator’s criticisms were misguided and accused politicians of trying to shift blame off themselves onto others.

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“It’s like blaming the Bureau of Printing and Engraving for our $15 trillion debt,” Lamb told POLITICO in response to Chambliss’s earlier comments on MSNBC’S “Morning Joe” show on Friday. “Since the beginning of time, television has been criticized for everything possible. I mean, if you can’t get your job done, you look around and try to blame it on somebody else. Television has nothing to do with the inability of this town to deal with the problems that are in front of them.”

C-SPAN also tweeted that Chambliss himself had appeared on the network 599 times.

Chambliss asserted Friday morning that the cable television network that airs congressional proceedings is leading to grandstanding rather than legislating.

“Partisanship has gotten worse and worse every year that I’ve been there,” said Chambliss on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think one thing that’s made it that way is C-SPAN, very honestly. You’ve got folks on TV… they rant and rave during dinner time on the East Coast and then at 9:00 you see the West Coast guys up there.”

“You know, being able to portray back home ‘I’m fighting’ is the kind of mantra that a lot of people carry there,” he added.

“I think there may be some truth in some of the individual [members of Congress] grandstanding,” admitted Lamb, but argued that C-SPAN performed the vital service of airing the views of the minority party.

“Before we were there, if you were in the minority in the House or the Senate, you didn’t stand a chance at communicating to the public because the media and the television networks were only interested in the majority,” he argued.

“People forget today how controversial it was to bring in C-SPAN … but when we brought the cameras in, people expected this: People are going to start grandstanding,” said panelist Lawrence O’Donnell, who served as a key aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1980s and 1990s, on “Morning Joe.”

C-SPAN launched in March of 1979, and the first televised session of the House of Representatives began with a speech by then-Congressman Al Gore.

Meanwhile, Chambliss also defended the Senate’s filibuster rule on “Morning Joe,” arguing that it protects the minority party’s rights.

“The great thing about the Senate is, and it was designed this way, the minority party has rights. And the minority party has rights because of the filibuster rule. So it does work, and it helps shape legislation at the end of the day. So, no, I don’t think you need to get rid of it,” said Chambliss.